Base color and reflection settings

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This video dives deeper into the Physical Material and takes a look at the base color and reflection settings. George shows how to control specularity, shininess, and reflectivity to create a variety of surfaces.

- [Instructor] Now let's dive a little bit furtherinto the physical material for ART.And we're going to take a look atbase color and reflection settings.Now this is going to determine the overallcharacteristics of your object.So let's go ahead and make surewe highlight this camera window here.And I'm going to open up an ActiveShade,and let's just render what we have.Now, as you can see this is a matte surface.So there's really not a lot of reflectivity on this surface.

So let's take a look at whatit looks like in the material editor.So I'm going to open up the smaller material editor here.We're going to overlook Slate becauseit's a little big for this screen here.So the material that we're goingto work with is called sculpture.And it should be the second slot in that material editor.Now if we scroll up here, you'll seewe have a number of parameters.And the one's we're going to take a look atare base color and reflections.

So this is the base color of the objectas well as how it reflects light.Now right now, the object has,basically a light gray color.But if we want, we can change it to really anything we want.So if we wanted to change it to somethinga little bit more blue we could certainly do that.And it will change the color of that object.Now when I darken the color, you'll see that it does havea little bit of reflectivity towards the bottom.

So you can kind of see the yellow on this basekind of reflecting a little bit.And the reflectivity, or the shiny-ness of the objectis determined by this roughness command.Now, typically, most materials thatyou come across in 3D have a specularity control.And what specularity is, is basicallyjust the opposite of roughness.And, in fact, if you want you can press this button hereand that will actually turnroughness into a specularity control.

So basically it's just the opposite of specularity.So a lot of roughness will make it less shiny.Less roughness will make it more shinyand give it more specularity.So let's go ahead and bring this up to one.And when I do, notice how thisbecomes pretty much a matte object.Now if we want a little bit of shiny-nessand specularity we can bring it to zero.And when we bring it to zero, you're going tostart to see reflected highlights on the object.

So now this object looks a little bit morelike a shiny paint type of object.So we have a lot of specularity.It looks a little like paint.Maybe a little bit like plastic.But again, it's much shinierand that's because of the specularity.And the specularity happens whenthe roughness goes down towards zero.So I'm going to go ahead and turn down my saturationand leave it at kind of a medium to light gray.And as you can see we still get the specularity.

Now the next thing I wanted to show youis how to get better reflectivity.Now the reflectivity is determinedby this control called metalness.So the higher the metalness attribute,the more it's going to act like a mirror.So if I bring it all the way up to one,this is going to be highly reflective.And it's going to look more like metalthan the base color of the object.

So even though we have a light gray base colorthis acts almost as a mirror so most of the colorin the scene is coming from the reflections.And so this metalness can also be thought of ashow much of the reflections are showing in that material.So if we wanted it to be more metal likewe'd bring it closer to one.So something like .5 will give ita little bit more of the original color.

And this is kind of the point where it stopsbeing reflective polished paint and starts being metal.So if this goes up to, say .75, you're going to see thatthis is going to look a little bit more like metalthan it looks like paint.And if we bring it down,let's go ahead and bring it down to .25,you'll see that it looks a little bit morelike a shiny paint than it does like metal.Now, in addition to these controlswe also have an index of refraction.

But that is more related tothe next one down, which is transparency.And then we also have a control that showshow much weight this base color has in the overall scheme.So right now I have transparency,sub-surfaces scattering and emission at zero.But if I were to mix these in, then this would controlhow much base color mixes with transparency,and how much that mixes withsub-surface scattering, emissions and so on.

So remember, when you're working withjust the base color and reflections of the objectthe roughness controls the specularity.A low roughness will be more shiny and more specularity,and then the metalness mixes in the reflectivity.So anything over about .5 will make thisstart to look like a mirror.

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Released

6/20/2017

The Autodesk Raytracer (ART) renderer is a fast, physically-based renderer that's available for a number of Autodesk applications, including 3ds Max, Revit, and Inventor. In this course, learn how to get the most out of this exciting, easy-to-use renderer. George Maestri starts out with the basics, taking a look at rendering controls for the ART Render, and explaining how to use the 3ds Max Scene Converter to translate scenes that were migrated from older projects. He shows how to create materials for ART, exploring the basics of the Physical Material, which is the recommended material for the ART renderer. George also covers working with lights, creating depth of field, and configuring motion blur in ART.